Point of View
by somelewt
Summary: Jack gets his hands on someone that can infiltrate the Crimson Raiders. After a little reprogramming that is.
1. Chapter 1

The lens reflects the light of the lamp hanging overhead, causing a sheen to glitter in his eye. With a hiss Jack lowers it and closes his left eye, the one he had been using to stare through it. After blinking a few times his vision returns to normal. This time he is a bit more careful when he looks into it. The lens is a very soft shade of red, a glow that becomes a light pink when Jack grabs one of the other lenses and holds it beneath the red one.

What he sees through it is magnified, and he sees its true power when he raises his gaze and allows the lenses to fall on a painting of himself on the far wall. He is staring straight up his left nostril. The image is so big he can count the hairs in his nose.

Jack lowers his arms and sits back in his chair, eyes still fixed on the painting. 'I can see why you are good at what you do.' Though this is an understatement of inconceivable proportions.. The trillionaire spins around in his chair, looking through the lenses again. After a few circles in which he silently contemplates for a while he stops, now facing towards another table on which four weapons are displayed.

One of them is a shotgun. Just an ordinary close combat weapon with a relatively strong recoil and a medium spray of bullets. It is perfect for when you are driven in a corner and need to blast your way through someone. Quite literally. The other three weapons are, very befitting of the hunter's class, sniper rifles. And they are not the cute,easy to use by everyday psychos type of rifles. Each of them has a rather small magazine, one of them holding only six bullets, the second one seven and the last one holding ten. He's had them tested, and it takes a very strong shoulder to withstand the recoil of either of them. One of his workers is now nursing a dislocated shoulder, even though the man is a veteran sniper. And the tests of the bullets just came back. The first one has armor piercing bullets, the second one tears through shield and flesh like a blade through butter and the third doesn't seem that great on first sight, but it can deal massive, massive damage on anything it hits.

And these rifles have zeroed in on more targets, and have probably hit home too more often then Jack cares to count.

With a swift kick the trillionaire moves his chair down a table, to where the original owner of the guns lies. One machine is beeping constantly, indicating the calm, regular heartbeat of the man on the table. It is accompanied by a larger machine that keeps track of the man's breathing, all the while adding a small amount of gas to the fresh air it is providing. It keeps the man fast asleep. A calm, dreamless sleep.

Jack clacks his tongue and lets his eyes hover over the uncovered body. Over bruises and cuts, some a day old and others nearly healed. Over many different scars, some of burn marks, others of knife and bullet wounds. Some lines are jagged, others neatly cut. Over patches of skin that are extremely white, almost sickly pale.

Over a fiber glass cage sewn into the chest, enforced with metal casing and embedded into the body. The flesh that is supposed to be there has been cut away, and Jack can stare straight through at a lung and a beating heart. A heart that, instead of filling two jugular veins is only filling one vein and a green, sturdy looking tube that acts like one.

Jack stares in complete silence at tubing and patches of metal. Muscles that are enforced with thick wires, blood vessels that have been replaced by colorful tubes. Bones that must be replaces by metal or fiberglass. He isn't very sure what the material is, but he can wait for the upcoming results of all of the tests they have done. The inventor stares at a patch of skin that is supposed to sport black hair, but instead watches as a sensory net is processing data. It is conveniently placed, probably embedded in the skull and enforced where possible. Jack is staring at an open eye socket, the right socket, which is riddled with shattered glass, confusing wiring and oozing blood.

Jack is staring at a Vault Hunter that has been a thorn in his eye since the day the inventor blew up that train, supposedly killing this man. Jack is staring at an android. More man then machine, but mechanical none the less.

'I really wonder who named you Zero. Someone who made you?' Jack wonders out loud, raising the lens that he has been holding this whole time. Just a few seconds pass when he blinks a few times and lowers it in his lap to hold gently. A smile crawls over his face, stretching the patched on skin in all the right places. It is a vindictive, cruel and creepy smile. Foreboding towards all of his enemies. All of Pandora knows who this Assassin in. This man belongs to the sniper elite. His skills rival, if not surpass those of that idiot drunk, Hawkeye. Bandit leaders piss their pants when a bounty worth collecting is placed on their head. Jack has heard tales of targets killing themselves before the Assassin could come for them. And the Crimson Raiders adore this guy.

This uber Assassin.

This elite sniper.

This reprogrammable cyborg.

If it could, Jack's smile would have grown even wider. Jack will crack this Zer0's firewalls and bring them down. He will tear through data and hack into his memory banks. The inventor is going to reboot systems and reroute wiring in all the right places. 'Oh Zero my Zero. We... ' Jack pauses and looks through the lens once more. After a moment of silence his eyes fall on the sleeping man on the table again. 'You and me Zero, we are gonna be best friends forever.'

On the table, Zer0 sleeps.


	2. Chapter 2

'...can be cleaned and upgraded. We have the technology to improve some parts. So maybe just upgrade the whole system?' The man is staring at Jack through glasses so thick his eyes are two times bigger then normal.

Jack himself clacks his tongue without looking up from the open chest cavity of the assassin. Beneath him the lung is working normally, inhaling air and pushing it back out. His eyes move up, following a set of tubes that connect the lung to the other one and a set of thick wiring up the assassin's throat. Zer0's mouth is covered by a breathing mask, hiding it and the filtering system inside of his mouth.

'Build a new one.' He looks up. 'From scratch.' Because that way, they will not need to bother with fitting in new parts. Replacing the whole system will be easier.

The man with the thick glasses nods and turns away, very eager to start.

Jack himself sits back down in his chair at the head of the table. With thin, rubber gloves on his hands he grabs a pair of pliers. As a real expert the trillionaire grabs one of the wires protruding from the assassin's open eye socket. With his free hand he grabs the newly constructed eye from the table and begins attaching it to the lose wires.

Twenty minutes later the bionic eye is set in the socket. The skin around it is cleaned neatly with some alcohol and Jack is able to sit back to enjoy his handy work.

Apart from several upgrades the new eye functions the same way as the old. Quite the craftsmanship, if he dares think so himself. Only now Zer0 can also locate Eridium, which is very important to someone like Jack. Not that he will be sending his new best friend out on lousy scout missions but this will help locate any sources of the pink greatness wherever he sends the assassin.

And Jack plans to send his besty to a whole lot of places.

Two days later he and three others are working on the new filtering system. Also upgraded with better filters. Many times more advanced then the older one. So much so they choose to replace the one biological lung with a bionic one as well.

Later that night, Jack is rewiring the assassin's left foot. During the last fight, where his goons captured Zer0, the leg was badly damaged.

Two days after that he installs a viriaty of chips, replacing older ones that will help with reprogramming the Vault Hunter.

And the day after that he and two others work on Zer0's communication systems. This way, when upgraded, Jack can issue commands, and also see and hear what the assassin experiences. It also helps monitoring health and state of mind. There are traces of such a system attached to Zer0's head, but those have been destroyed and they are unable to tell if they have ever been used in the first place.

Very fucking handy indeed.

After letting the assassin rest and recover for a week, the real fun begins.

The trillionaire is sitting behind a myriad of screens, keeping a close eye on each of them. One of the monitors is beeping softly for any vitals. And on two others rows and rows of date are filtering through the assassin's memory banks. The last one is using a different code, used to crack and reprogram.

Some of Zer0's programs are still offline. The ones that were rebooted have Hyperion etched all over them. Those will be recoded and hidden, should anyone else want to have a gander inside of the assassin's head.

Although it could very well take many hours more, Jack is already wriggling in his undies to online his new best friend.

But when that moment arrives, not everything goes as planned.

If Jack were any less of a man he would have crapped his designer pants.

'Stop...' He repeats, holding both arms up to defend himself. His eyes are wide and his breath is ragged. As the rush of adrenaline lowers, so do his arms.

His eyes meet the eyes of his attacker, shifting from the one blue eye to the other red one. Jack sees the lenses smoothly fold over one another, going over all of his weak spots and zeroing in on them.

Zer0 himself doesn't move. The corner of his mouth twitches, he blinks with his normal eye, and then a thin lock of black hair falls in front of his face.

'Drop it.' The wrench that is clutched on the Assassin's hand falls with an almost deafening clatter on the floor.

There is confusion shining in that baby blue orb, but Zer0 voices none of his concerns. He keeps staring at the trillionaire, mouth opening slightly and then closing again.

'Sit down.' Jack points at the chair the assassin has just broken out of. To his immense delight Zer0 does what he is told after a long moment of hesitation. He slowly sits back, face disturbingly blank. The assassin isn't angry, doesn't look scared, is not about to cry out in hysterics. Zer0 doesn't seem much of anything.

But it works.

'...Vitals normal. No data is corrupted. Everything is fine.' One of his lackeys, the one not just hammered to death with a wrench, crawls from under his desk and is staring at the monitor.

Zer0 actually works with minor, neglectable hitches in his data.

Three days later, after a few more tests Jack is sitting by the bed of his sleeping bestie. Four other, high ranking officers are discussing a few details regarding his latest, most brilliant scheme.

'Send the call.' Jack leans back and runs his hand through his hair. He is exhausted from working almost nonstop, but only now he is starting to feel the effects. 'Make sure to alert eh... whatshisface.'

'Yessir.' One of his officers, a rather young man begins compiling a message on his own flat screen. The point is to alert... watshisface, who is actually a Crimson Raider spy. Hyperion itself has known for months, and up to this day the trillionaire is very happy that they have not acted against hidden Raider.

The plan is to move their prisoner, Jack's new bestie, to a highly secured location in the north. To get there they will have to move through animal infested territory. It will be the perfect place to expect a Crimson Raider ambush. If the trillionaire is correct, those annoying idiots will try and rescue their friend.

Not because Zer0 is such a nice guy or particularly high ranking within the Raiders. The assassin is loyal and a great asset to them, as past has repeatedly shown. That is the reason why Jack hopes they will attempt a rescue operation.

One that will succeed of course. In order to get Zer0 back amongst his comrades, the Raiders need to succeed.

Jack is counting on it.


End file.
